Site Navigation

Site Mobile Navigation

Damien Hirst goes for broke at Sotheby's

LONDON — Damien Hirst has a recurring nightmare. His big auction here is about to begin and the Sotheby's salesroom is overflowing with collectors and dealers. Oliver Barker, the auctioneer, opens the bidding on 223 works that Hirst has produced over the past two years. Suddenly the place goes quiet. Not a paddle is raised.

"The galleries have convinced everyone not to bid," Hirst said last month, recounting the dream while overseeing the installation of "Beautiful Inside My Head Forever," his one-artist, two-day auction that begins Monday night.

"It's risky I know," he added. "But it's too late to worry about it now."

In what some experts say has the potential to change the face of art dealing, Hirst has cut out his dealers - the Gagosian Gallery in New York and the White Cube Gallery in London - and taken his work straight to auction.

Every year or so the 43-year-old British artist likes to cause a sensation. There was the summer of 2007 when thousands of people lined up outside White Cube waiting to glimpse a human skull cast in platinum and covered with 8,601 diamonds that he claimed to have sold at its $100 million asking price. When he was pressed, however, it turned out that the buyer was actually a consortium of investors that included the artist himself; Jay Jopling, owner of White Cube; and Frank Dunphy, Hirst's business manager.

A few months earlier the artist had installed 30 dead sheep, a dead shark, 2 sides of beef, 300 sausages and a pair of doves in the lobby of the Lever House in New York. And his "Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living," another shark, this one submerged in a tank of formaldehyde, sold to the hedge-fund billionaire Steven Cohen for $8 million. It has been lent to the Metropolitan Museum, where it is on view.

"Even if the sale bombs I'm opening a new door for artists everywhere," Hirst said. Although few artists are capable of producing enough work to hold a one-man sale, his effort could inspire others to consign even one piece to an auction house rather than to a dealer.

"If you're going to do it," Hirst added. "Do it big. It's nice not to play safe."

This is not Hirst's first foray into the auction business. A charity sale that he and Bono organized at Sotheby's in New York in February raised $42 million for AIDS relief in Africa through the sale of works by 100 artists.

More to the point, in 2004, a year after the closing of the Pharmacy, a trendy London restaurant of which Hirst was part owner, he auctioned all the designs that adorned the restaurant. Everything went - his butterfly paintings and glass-fronted medicine cabinets; aspirin-shaped bar stools; matchboxes illustrated with medical tools; even the china with the restaurant's logo on it - at a special Sotheby's sale in London that totaled about $20 million.

With the current sale, Hirst may be gambling, but he has also concentrated for months on marketing. He invited major collectors like the fashion designer Muccia Prada, the Ukranian businessman Victor Pinchuk and Christie's owner, François Pinault, to his Gloucestershire studios for a private preview of the auction.

For sale will be variations on familiar themes. There will be dead animals galore: black sheep, tiger sharks, a dove, a zebra. There will also be glass cabinets filled with everything from diamonds to cigarette butts. Paintings and works on paper decorated with his signature skulls and dots, swirls and butterflies are available in all sizes. As part of his sales pitch, Hirst said he would no longer be making any more spin or butterfly paintings, far fewer dead animals and almost no dot paintings.

Estimates range from a high of $15.8 million to $23.6 million for a calf submerged in formaldehyde to about $60,000 for a colored pencil drawing of dots. Sotheby's expects the two-day sale to total about $200 million. That figure does not include the buyer's premium, the fee buyers pay Sotheby's: 25 percent of the first $20,000, 20 percent of the next $20,000 to $500,000 and 12 percent of the rest.

Sotheby's and Hirst will not reveal the details of any financial package except to say that no guarantee has been paid to him. It is safe to say that if the sale follows his recurring dream and falls flat, the unsold work will be returned to him and Sotheby's will have to write off its expenses.

Naysayers predict he is killing his own golden cow. They point out that his market has slowed considerably: In recent London auctions, a quarter of more than 20 works on offer went unsold.

Alberto Mugrabi, a Manhattan dealer and collector, said he had been getting calls from people who have never bought a work of art before, asking for his advice. "It will open up his market," said Mugrabi, who owns about 150 works by Hirst and will be attending the sale. "This is a one-time thing. But if he tries it again soon it could be a disaster."

Hirst has help in his marketing efforts. Sotheby's has devoted every inch of its London gallery space to Hirst. About 30 guards have been employed to watch over the installation during the 11-day public viewing, which was open until midnight Saturday and drew crowds of thousands.

The auction house also reinforced its floors to show Hirst's dead animal kingdom. The calf weighs 10 tons. And it hired the New York architect Peter Marino to transform a rabbit warren of tiny back offices into a suite of rooms with polished mahogany doors and walls lined with Hirst's butterfly paintings. Resembling a five-star hotel, several rooms have fireplaces and all are equipped with flat-screen televisions to allow VIPs to watch the sale live and bid by telephone.

To make sure the works reach as wide an audience as possible Sotheby's experts have taken highlights of the sale everywhere from the Hamptons to New Delhi. The catalog, which Sotheby's said cost about $240,000 to produce, is meant to be a collector's item, too. The three-volume tome has a special slipcovered case and costs $130.

The artist, who employs 120 people to help him with his work, had a hand in its design as he has the Sotheby's installation, spending every day for six weeks at the auction house.

Hirst said he will not be at the sale. Looking around as crews put the finishing touches on his installation, he let out a large sigh. "It's me, me and me," he said. Do you ever get sick of me? "Yeah," he replied. "Totally."